Respect and self-belief fuelled Samoa's stunning 32-23 ambush of Australia in one of their greatest victories - a 32-23 triumph in Sydney, the team said on Sunday.

Manu Samoa, representing the South Pacific island nation of 180,000, toppled the second-ranked Wallabies to unsettle their lead-up to next weekend's Tri-Nations opener with South Africa and just less than two months from the World Cup.

The victory was fully deserved, with the Samoans outscoring their greater resourced opponents four tries to two for their first ever win over the Wallabies in five meetings.

"Our catch-cry this week has been self-belief and I don't think we would have bothered turning up today if we didn't think we could win," Samoa's Japan-based centre Seilala Mapusua said.

"We are very passionate about that and that carried us through in the last few minutes.

"Given that the Manu Samoa team belongs to the people, we are always playing for our people every time we put on that blue jersey."

Samoa's New Zealand assistant coach Brian McLean said the epic result was about instilling respect.

"We had a good tour of the northern hemisphere last year and this is the first game where we've had all our players back who played on that tour," McLean said.

"We got some respect there and while we didn't win any games we played some tier one nations and didn't lose by a lot of points.

"We're just hoping to grow our game. Today for us was about respect, we wanted to get some respect and hopefully we've done that."

The upset has caused some unexpected reappraisal within the Wallaby camp ahead of next Saturday's opening Tri-Nations Test with reigning World Cup champions South Africa in Sydney.

"We got beaten in the physical exchanges, they defended strongly and they attacked the breakdown effectively and turned ball over," Australia coach Robbie Deans said.

"They are obviously a good combination, we knew that, it was a globally selected side and it's a World Cup combination."

Wallaby skipper Rocky Elsom, playing only his second game since the team's last Test against France in November due to injuries, said Australia's attack was ineffectual.

"I'm not happy about it, I don't think anyone is, but we've got six days till we play the Springboks so we've got plenty to work on," he said.

AFP